


Silmarillion Character Designs

by Kokiri85



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Art, Character Designs, Elves, F/M, Fanart, Gen, Kinslayers, but nothing gold can stay, feanorians - Freeform - Freeform, i am here for feanor/nerdanel as happy nerds, murder!elves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:35:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 19
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26583007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kokiri85/pseuds/Kokiri85
Summary: Sketching out what they all look like, hopefully for future reference.
Relationships: Fëanor | Curufinwë/Nerdanel
Comments: 141
Kudos: 172





	1. Feanor, Nerdanel, and Sons

**Author's Note:**

> I assume Nerdanel is tall, because Maedhros is tall. That's how genetics works, right? I also just like tall ladies. I was half considering making her taller than Feanor.
> 
> As for all their many, many, many kids, I am pretty satisfied with Maedhros and Maglor (top left and top center) but my satisfaction wanes the further down it goes and it started to feel like I was just mixing and matching features arbitrarily. Also, why is Celegorm blond? Is that fanon? It's in my head now, and trying to deviate from it would just make him less recognizeable anyway, but why is he blond.

Feanor is a nerd with nerdy goggles, and Nerdanel is so into it. 

Curufin looks like a vampire, oops? 


	2. Miriel, Feanor and Celegorm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Starlightwalking pointed out that Celegorm is blond because Miriel is blond (thank you) so I thought working out her design might help me with his. And hers fell into place right away! I figure Feanor takes heavily after her, if she out so much of herself into him that it killed her. I had originally olanned to give her the same color eyes too, except once I I had her drawn out she reallu obviously needed purple eyes, ah well. I quite like her.
> 
> Celegorm is still being an obnoxious, uncooperative pain in the ass. So I guess that's in character?


	3. Finwe, Indis, Fingolfin and Finarfin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finwe, Indis, Fingolfin and Finarfin. Indis was fun, but Finwe is a complete blank space in my mind, and I don't know how much I like him here. I am also not sure if I like the fact that Finarfin doesn't look anything like Feanor at all. Maybe I should give tyem all the same eyebrows, hn....


	4. Fingolfin, Anaire, Fingon, Turgon and Aredhel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've been eager to get to this set: Fingolfin, Anaire, Turgon, Fingon and Aredhel. I had ideas already about Fingon and Aredhel, so Anaire is all the features I needed to make that work. But Turgon was a blank canvas, so I'm quite pleased with how much he works for me now. I feel like I can see a path forward to Elrond now, who is also a bit of a blank for me (because I don't want him to look like the movie, but the movie is taking up all the space is my head--until now!)


	5. Turgon, Elenwe and Idril

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elenwe, Turgon and Idril. I love those eyebrows; they are going to last many generations in this line.
> 
> Idril is smarter than you and is judging your choices. Man, imagine if she'd met Turin instead of Tuor? Has anyone written that fic?


	6. Idril, Tuor and Earendil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Idril, Tuor and Earendil. 
> 
> Anyone remember that old animated LotR movie? My memories of it are fuzzy, but I remmeber how Legolas was in a different, lighter color palette from everyeone else, and how it set him apart. I really liked that, and I want there to be some difference between elves and men besides pointy ears and facial hair... but not paleness, because no. But maybe color saturation? Men are more washed out and gray? And also have face lines. I have been very carefully not giving the elves any face lines, even subtle not-old-looking ones, so that I could make this a thing.
> 
> So maybe Earendil should have face lines, idk. I feel like pre-choice half-elves aren't so much a half-and-half mix of the two, as unrealized potential to become either--but how on earth do you draw that? Stubby elf ears? Meh.


	7. Feanor, Fingolfin and Finarfin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to redo Finarfin, to make him look more like Fingolfin. And might as well throw Feanor in there too, to compare and contrast... and to annoy him. I can almost imagine Finwe holding a camera, telling Feanor to smile.
> 
> Fingolfin is a younger sibling who grew up taller than his older sibling. He's as restrained about this as anyone could hope for, especially considering Feanor. Pretending not to know that Feanor hates hugs is a small vice.


	8. Finarfin, Earwen, Finrod and Galadriel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finarfin, Earwen, Finrod and Galadriel. I really wanted to give Earwen brown hair, but then I looked it up and alas, she's another silvery-blond. Elves are all blond or black haired, there are almost none with brown hair, it feels really unbalanced to me. Maybe elf genetics are really different, like cats.
> 
> Also, half of why I wanyed to redo Finarfin was so he could pass those eyebrows on to her and she could look a little bit like Feanor. I also just like putting such a sharp feature on women.
> 
> That is definitely not Nauglamir, but it is an early proto effort to think about Nauglamir. And to make Finrod appropriately glittery, since he's a guy who commissions jewelry fancy enough to get a proper name.


	9. Thingol, Melian and Luthien

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thingol, Melian and Luthien.
> 
> Melian has gotten weirder and more eldritch, which is sort of an ongoing goal. How creepy and alien can I make her, and still have her be pretty? 
> 
> Luthien is another matter. How do you draw the most beautiful maiden ever? That seems subjective? Let's not even try, and just give her all Melian's supernatural elements that aren't eldritch, like swirls and sparkles.
> 
> Thingol is... there.


	10. Luthien, Beren and Dior

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luthien and Beren are off to wreck Morgoth. She's pretty psyched.
> 
> Ah, poor Dior. I feel mean, but I imagine him as kind of vapid? Like, a haughty and entitled supermodel (who's overly invested in jewelry....) But I suppose he died before he could do anything more productive or gain any wisdom. I certainly had fun giving him more toned down bits of Luthien's features. His hair is still swirly but seems more affected by gravity, and the iridescent colors and sparkles are more muted.
> 
> I'm also trying to go for a Doriath style with, like. Leaves for a crown, very little metalwork or jewelry, except Dior has this one specific necklace. Nauglamir itself was made from jewels that Finrod brought over from Aman, and he had some Teleri heritage, so that could have included pearls too? I wanted it to be a fusion of Noldor and Falmari elements, even though I have not clearly worked out what either of their jewelry looks like.


	11. Dior, Nimloth, Elwing, Elured and Elurin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dior, Nimloth, Elwing, Elured and Elurin.
> 
> Elwing still has hair sparkles, but it no longer casts it's own glow, and it's closer to a natural dark brown and less purple. Or it was supposed to be, but on my phone it looks kind of green... eh. Also I really wanted the twins to be blond, and to try modifying the colors and sparkes for pale hair instead of dark. 
> 
> I can go two ways with Elwing, honestly. One is that she was determined to keep the silmaril out of anger and spite, no matter the cost to anyone else, including her children. But that makes her *completely* unsympathetic to me, so I try to resist it. Instead I try to see her at the time of the 3rd kinslaying as just kind of traumatized and anxious, that she didn't really plan in advance to abandon her children or commit suicide, but just reacted in panic without thinking. It makes her kind of flighty and weak, but then she was pretty young at the time and could mature and grow alot later in Aman.


	12. Elwing, Earendil, Elrond and Elros

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh, I have been looking forward to this one! The Maiar sparkes have gotten very subtle, but are not quite gone. And for all that idk, it's maybe kind of lazy to make all the twins identical, it's also really interesting to make *these* twins identical but then differentiate them with elf vs man qualities. Though it turns out that when you just desaturate a skin tone, it ends up looking paler than the saturated counterpart. Trying to correct for that was kind of complicated, and I feel like Elros still looks a little goth next to Elrond.
> 
> Elwing looks like she thinks she's in a bad neighborhood, and worries her jewelry will get stolen. Though to be fair, she isn't all wrong. I don't have anything particular against Earendil, but I don't think it's totally unfounded to insinuated that he's kind of uninterested in his wife's problems.


	13. Luthien and Galadriel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The most pressing question of this whole project: can you braid Luthien's hair??? What is the actual texture like, does it have a lot of actual mass or does it compress down like cotton candy? I'm thinking it's semi-fluid, and it does compress but also escapes almost immediately from any ties, like water or clouds flowing. Or is that tmi, did I just ruin it like midi-chlorians ruined the force?
> 
> I don't really know how on earth Galadriel and Luthien would get along. It's also a super interesting question, but I can't get my bearings on that one. They're both kind of restless, bigger than the girl boxes other people want to put them in--but Luthien seems wilder and less invested in society, and Galadriel is more establishment--as long as she gets to influence the establishment...?
> 
> All I am sure of is that I think that she finds Luthien's hair a compelling challenge.


	14. Celeborn, Galadriel and Celebrian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My main thought in this family is that Celebrian should be cute. This mainly comes from her characterization in Bunn's [Return to Aman](https://archiveofourown.org/series/727971) series I think, and also just because it makes what happens to her that much worse :P
> 
> Celeborn I have way less to say about, except that I made him look like Nimloth entirely by accident, but I just learned that apparently they are related so this is a happy accident! And I wanted some green eyes. It seems like they all have grey eyes if I actually look it up, so I might stop looking it up.


	15. Elrond, Celebrian, Elladan, Elrohir and Arwen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aw, what a nice happy family. It'd be a shame if something were to happem to it.
> 
> I do have this image in my head though, of Elrond's family being like, the stand-out most functional elf family in Middle Earth--or at least conspicuously more functional that Thranduil's. This is partly just to throw shade on Thranduil, but also because after the chaotic mess of his own childhood, he both: 1) craved stability, 2) appreciated that relationships take work, and 3) was well practiced in patience and tolerance and forgiveness.
> 
> The maia hair is mostly faded in the next gen here. There are no sparkles left; but there are still some irridescent colors hanging out, and swirls that might just be wavy hair. And recombining the Luthien features that Elrond still had, with generally rounder features on Celebrian, has let me come around so that Arwen *does* look a lot like Luthien \o/
> 
> That dot makes me slightly crazy, but I have 30+ layers and I can't find which one it's on and I finally just had to let it go -__-


	16. Curufin, Curufin's wife, and Celebrimbor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've both been wanting to get to them, because Celebrimor is my perfect beloved son who did nothing wrong, but also avoiding it because I didn't know what to do with the wife. Like, we don't actually know *anything* about her, do we? I don't think we even know for sure if she was from Aman or Belerdiand?
> 
> But then it was suggested in a podcast I listen to that she had a lot of influence on Celebrimbor, and that was part of why he turned away from his father, and oh I LOVE that idea! She quickly fell into place for me after that: proud and haughty in the sort of Noldor way that would appeal to Curufin, and she totally bought into the Feanorian bullshit--to a point. But at some point during Curufin's decline she took a good look at her trash husband and was like: so you have ruined your life with a terrible oath, and I am stuck being soul-married to you literally forever. Fine. But you are _not_ ruining my son. _**Fight me.**_


End file.
